


Eye of the Needle

by mysterycultist



Series: Till the Unseen Flame [2]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Blood Mage Hawke, M/M, Terminal Illnesses, Tranquil Hawke, potential happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 08:59:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10987647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterycultist/pseuds/mysterycultist
Summary: You try to stitch your life now into the life you forgot, to create a whole idea of yourself, but you aren't taking care of Hawke and if you try to say what you're doing on that farm, you come up speechless. You love him, but that isn't the answer. Love makes you want to go.





	Eye of the Needle

**Author's Note:**

> this is two years old and I'm posting it because it still makes me sad sometimes and I feel bad about never finishing Till the Unseen et cetera. But please remember that it's really fucking old.

You think of Tranquil as flat-affected shopkeeps monologuing about the cost of enchantment. You leave the coin on the stall and walk away, and they begin the speech again as a new customer approaches. 

You, in the last year, have begun to think of them as ghosts. Garrett knows nothing of enchantment or potion-making or archival techniques, and he shows no interest in learning. You aren't sure why you expected him to, but you're not sure you would have been able to bear it if that had been the way it fell. You would have known he was truly gone. 

He runs the farm. You recall the image he'd painted for you one night, not long after he bought the estate--in a dusty corner of the wine cellar. His mother was hosting a party and you kept him company while he hid from it; earlier there had been a grand show of adding the first new bottle to the shelves, and you and he passed this back and forth by the light of a tallow candle--in vivid color he described tilling the cornfield, falling asleep beside the cow the night she gave birth, training his mabari to chase nugs. 

He said, "I never imagined I'd miss that life." 

It's not much land, but he tends all of it. He thinks of nothing else. When you leave for bed every night he is at the desk, reviewing the numbers that represent the animal feed, the firewood, the lowest sustainable cost at which to sell wheat. When you rise every morning, he is already in the fields. 

Sebastian swore vengeance on him when he refused to slay Anders, but after one letter from Varric he granted Hawke a five-acre farmstead on the banks of the Minanter. "We had to do something to Hawke," the letter said. Every fortnight he sends an envoy to report on his well-being, and whenever you are not there with him, he posts three men from his honor guard at the farmhouse door. 

You are there with him less and less. 

You have never been a farmer. You have been a slave and a mercenary. The farm is enough to pay expenses, but Kirkwall is in shambles, and ships come in from all corners to prey on the people caught in the wreckage. What would you be if you weren't there? So you go. When you leave, he helps you saddle the horse and stands at the side of the road until you can no longer see him on the horizon when you look back.

You have never been someone's caretaker. That is not what you were before. Once you spoke to your sister in Hawke's house and she told you that you'd tried so hard to take care of her, or at least, you'd thought of yourself as someone who did. You try to stitch your life now into the life you forgot, to create a whole idea of yourself, but you aren't taking care of Hawke and if you try to say what you're doing on that farm, you come up speechless. You love him, but that isn't the answer. Love makes you want to go.

You talk to Isabela when she's in port but there's always an excuse for her to stay clear of Starkhaven. Varric has made the trip a few times, but he and Aveline are holding Kirkwall together on a wish and a prayer, and every time he's seen Hawke he's only lasted an hour or so before he excuses himself to run out to the barn, pet the mule and cry. Merrill has neither the money or the time to travel to Starkhaven, but still she is here almost every month, sitting down to a game of cards with the two of you, talking of magic and animal husbandry with Hawke for hours, smiling and laughing even though he cannot, refusing to leave him for dead. It's harder for you to resent her for anything. 

You're grateful he doesn't seem interested in leaving the farm for any length of time. It would be dangerous for him to be in Kirkwall, dangerous for him and for the city, and you don't like the idea of Hawke--his face so well known here--traveling when he can do nothing to defend himself. He could still throw a punch, you suppose, but when you tried to put a sword in his hand he just looked at it and set it down. 

It's so strange to see him lighting a match. 

There's also the fact that you are dying. 

It's been nearly fifteen years since your markings were treated, and the damage is wearing on you. You explained it to Hawke around the time you became involved with him--the pain, in your skin and your head, had been so unbearable that you hadn't left your room in five days. He came to see if you'd been killed. 

"I'm getting there," you said. 

He and the other Mages tried for years to unravel exactly what the upkeep ritual entailed. Your memories were not very helpful, as, when the ritual was being performed on you, you were typically strapped down and blinded by pain. 

They came up with something, a blood and spirit spell (it's funny to you now, at first you refused to let them perform blood magic on you even though that's clearly the basis of the original spell), that at least alleviated your headaches, crawling skin, racing heart, dizziness for a while--but it was little better than a bandage on a stomach wound, and while Merrill does this for you whenever you see her, it seems to do less every time. 

Your sight is going faster than your hearing. Your mind may not be far behind. 

Once you saw a street painter, frustrated with his work, cover a landscape--red flowers on trees, low clay walls and a road--with white wash. Under the first coat you could see the color of the flowers; under the second, whiteness. This is how your mind looks. 

A few days ago he said something you can't remember and you laughed, because he can still make you do that, even if he isn't trying. Then you kept laughing, and laughing, for five minutes unable to stop. You promised him that he'd die before you and you won't be able to keep that, but you still have time. 

You keep freezing still while walking, while feeding the horse, lacing your greaves, seized by the thought that you've forgotten to do something. You can't remember what. 

It is a little more than a year. Anders sends word to Varric first, supposing, incorrectly, that you would burn a letter from him before opening it. Your hatred for him is not so strong. 

In the past year, you have heard snatches of his manifesto whispered on the streets, between mothers, friends and lovers of the mages killed in the annulment or lost in the confusion, pages clutched in the hands of refugees you pulled from the holds of Tevinter ships. It still terrifies you.

He's lived by the grace of these people, from basement to basement, from barn to barn, staying nowhere long. This is what Varric tells you. Anders is not there when the College of Enchanters votes, but he is nearby, and everything that is known to the mages is made known to him. Varric sends you a note that says, "Fast times in Kirkwall, stay away for now, Broody. Don't write. Can't be there when it happens but for the love of the Maker, just THINK about this. I told him to come and he should be there within the month, what happens from there is up to you." Anders's letter is enclosed. 

The first few lines are in a half-illegible scrawl. At the second paragraph, it switches to a clear, precise hand. You think of the letters you write with Hawke--pages of your blocky script and a short note in the same florid scribble Hawke has always had, with the same characteristic misspellings and abbreviations, lacking all the animation he'd always pressed to the page, and signed by both of you. 

_ (G.H.--Hello Merrill, 6 births from pig sow, all well. thnk you for elvroot advise, the pests are much decreesed. Pls write has Tariel improved w. ice casted from hand. If visualising does not help try having him freese water from a bucket instead of conjur'd, this can be easier. Elemental from staff only goes so far, handcasting very important. Will not always have staff anyway. Write soon if convenient.  _

_ Your friends,  _

_ Hawke  & Fenris)  _

There is an excess of preamble on the injustice of Hawke's situation and the situation of the mages as a whole over the past two-hundred years, so you skim. Anders (or, you suppose, Justice) informs Varric that the circles have effectively dissolved, in case he was not aware (you're sure he was; the news reached Kirkwall overnight), and writes that the decisive factor, the instigator of this, was not Hawke or Kirkwall or Anders himself at all. 

Your eyes jump from word to word. You struggle to focus, you struggle to hold the letter still in front of you. The letter arrived at the house two days before you did, but as it was addressed to you, Hawke left it unopened on the kitchen table. You read it resting against the frame of the back door, as the sun is just beginning to wane. Over the sound of your pulse, you can just hear the clang of cookware in the washbasin. The dog runs in from the field and sits down at your feet. 

Anders believes that he can draw a spirit to Hawke using a modified Harrowing ritual. He believes that Justice, as he's apparently taken to calling it again, can convince a spirit to touch Hawke's mind and restore his connection to the Fade, and further, he believes that if he convinces the spirit to keep Hawke's sleeping mind in its demesne, as is the custom with spirit healers, and as Hawke's pride demon once did, Hawke will not be as vulnerable to repossession as he should be, because the spirit will protect him. This is what the Seekers of Truth do to themselves, he says, but they aren't mages.

He wanted to try something like this after the battle at the Gallows, but skipping the Tranquility. Hawke refused to risk it. "Look what happened to you," he'd said.

Anders swears that this is different. 

The dog is whining and from the sink Hawke asks you if anything is wrong. 

"Yes," you say. 

He can read no better Tranquil than he ever could, so you read the letter aloud to him. Your throat is dry and your voice cracks, and he sets a glass of water in front of you, then takes a seat opposite to you at the table and takes your hand. 

Earlier on he wanted to shave his face clean because maintaining his beard was inefficient, and you told him to do what he wanted but he saw that you were upset and has never spoken of shaving since. You keep telling yourself that he can't love you. You have to remind yourself to stop hoping he'll smile. 

You finish the letter, and you ask him, "What do you want to do?" 

He looks out the window, considering. Sometimes he needs hours to decide what he wants to say. Few things are intuitive for him anymore, he has to do the sums. You drain the water glass and look out with him, your hand still in his. The sky is red, now, and a crow is sitting on the fence a dozen or so feet past the glass. A thousand times this year you have stood by the road and imagined leaving everything behind and just walking, walking until you reached the ocean again, boarding a ship headed south, running forever. You imagined Hawke watching you leave until you disappeared on the horizon, and every time you left, you came back. 

If you thought he was really gone, you would not be here. You still go on walks with him, every evening that you're home, and you still talk. It's not as it was. But when you're with him, in moments like this, you don't feel alone at all. 

Finally, Hawke says, "Are the chances of the spirit staying good?" 

"I don't know." 

"If it doesn't, can I be made Tranquil again?" 

"I don't know. He didn't say." 

Hawke nods. "If the spirit doesn't stay and I can't, you should kill me. The risk of repossession is too great." 

The back door is still open,  and the wind stirs the leaves in the field and blows into the room, rustling the curtains. You nod and say, "Of course. Does that mean you want this?" 

"To reverse the tranquility?" 

You turn his hand over and he opens his fist so that you can trace the lines of his palm. The scars there will never heal; his forearm and his wrist are mottled with crossed cuts gone pale, and his hands still bear faint slashes from gripping blades. His skin is even more calloused, now, and he's tanner from more time spent in the sun than in Darktown. "Yes," you say. 

He says, "I want you to be happy." 

"I will be happy so long as I am with you." 

"I don't think you're being honest." 

"You told me that you would rather be alive this way than be dead. Were you being honest?" 

"I'm always honest." He does not follow this with a grin. "I can't fight, but I can still do more alive than dead. I was afraid that I would be useless, that I would suffer indignity, and that my life would be empty, but I don't think that any of these things have happened. I'm not sure that you are happy." 

"I am fine." 

"I can still understand that 'fine' means something else." 

"I will not ask you to do this for me." 

"I can do more if I'm connected to the Fade, and I'll be able to appreciate this fully." 

He says this and sets his other hand over yours. You take a long, controlled breath. 

He asks you what you'll do if you have to kill him. Your mind is completely empty. All you can think of is a song you heard him strumming on the lute this afternoon. He sleeps as little as he ever did, and when he finishes with the accounts at night or has nothing else to do, he plucks at the lute because, he says, it's challenging, and because once you said that you liked hearing it. He started learning after his mother died--Orana was close to her and had trouble coping, so when she offered to teach him, he thought it would help restore her sense of belonging. Leandra loved music, and you think, really, that they were both using it to feel close to her. You remember watching them in the Amell library as they sat in twin chairs, Orana strumming a beautiful melody, Garrett struggling to maintain a rhythm to accompany her. He tripped on the strings and Orana played on as if the song was written that way. He laughed, and she smiled down at her lap. Merrill was clapping in time, Isabela pulled you into a dance... 

He's much better at it, now. He says it's easier to hear the notes, but his fingers still trip. 

Minutes pass and you have no answer. When you agreed to kill him if he lost control, years ago, it hadn't felt like a choice. It was inevitable, you were just going to take what time you had with him and deal with what came next when it came. "I'll keep doing what I've been doing," you say. 

"I won't risk it if killing me will make your life unbearable." 

"Do you want to try it?" 

"If you have to kill me, you shouldn't just keep killing slavers and doing mercenary work. You should live near Varric or Aveline and Donnic, or go to sea with Isabela. You shouldn't isolate yourself again." 

"I won't." 

"Then I think it's worth the risk to try." 

You nod, and you rest your forehead on the table, and you break down crying. When you're done, he's still at the other side of the table, watching the sun set out the window. 


End file.
